New exhibitions include an exploration of Chicano activism in art at the Center for Visual Art and a roomful of art, some of it created on site at Access Gallery, by a disabled artist with powerful messages (see below). The weekend will also see the introduction of a new lowbrow…
When you’re a veteran of the Front Range scene, there’s plenty of “been there, done that” to contend with while continuing to pursue your art. But Matt O’Neill, who just wrapped up a big painting show at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, has learned how to keep things fresh:…
It’s never a ho-hum day at an animal shelter, as Liesl Beckmann of the Humane Society of the South Platte Valley will attest. Though the open-admission shelter mostly sees the usual dogs and cats pass in and out of its doors, that doesn’t mean they don’t also host the occasional…
In its 27th year, the Colorado AIDS Walk’s goals haven’t changed a bit, though we hear less about AIDS/HIV in the news and, at least in the U.S., fewer people die from the disease. But it hasn’t gone away, says Colorado AIDS Project spokesman Jeff Trujillo. “The biggest thing we…
It takes near-superhuman skills to pull together a group show of works by more than 25 local, national and international artists in a space as small as Plus Gallery. But that’s not why Plus maven Ivar Zeile calls the gallery’s summer portrait exhibition Super Human. The nitty-gritty of the show…
Whether you’re looking for the element of surprise inherent in an off-the-cuff improv riff, a laugh-out-loud good time as light as a perfect summer evening or a chilling comedy about a woman who obsessively answers a dead man’s phone, it’s all yours this weekend. Read on for the details. See…
You have to wonder why FurCon happens in the heat of August, because, like, thick fur everywhere? Nonetheless, the furries convened over the weekend at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, clad head-to-toe in plush costumes. Thank goodness for air-conditioning. Danielle Lirette brought back these pictures and more of FurCon’s heavy-duty…
It’s not too late to travel this summer. The best thing about books is that they can take you anywhere — and you never have to leave your house. They challenge your mind or simply tickle it, and like the best travels, memories stay with you long after the trip…
Celebrate the great outdoors this weekend with a festival of sculptural works in a park, as well as a show of pieces by people who paint outdoors. And then there’s a transcendent exhibit that will transport viewers to a different plane. If you’re looking for art that will take you…
You see aerial dance in circuses and burlesque shows, at gymnastics meets and even on the formal dance stage — but it wasn’t always so. And as Nancy Smith of Boulder’s Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance will attest, aerial dance has not only grown in stature in this country, but it’s…
Over the weekend, the fourth annual Denver County Fair brought everything Denver — from pot and paraphernalia vendors in the first-ever county fair Pot Pavilion to drag queens and lucha libre wrestlers and pretty contortionists in the Freak Show — to the National Western Complex for a nonstop weekend of…
Art is changing faster than we can keep up with it, multiplying into novel and unique forms with help from new technologies and materials and broader ideas about what it actually constitutes. That’s the thinking behind the Arvada Center’s new exhibition series, Unbound, which explores the invented and immersive spaces…
Once a year, the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition rounds up community-theater groups and professionals from around the state for the Colorado Theatre Festival, a long weekend of workshops, networking and performances that are open to the public and reasonably priced. And this year, the fest’s twenty-sixth, the ante has been…
We learned a lot about Denver journalist Helen Thorpe in last year’s Denver Center Theatre Company stage adaptation of her nonfiction book Just Like Us, the story of four Mexican-American girls and their struggle to better their lives. Throughout the drama, the character of Helen was on stage observing the…
Because Jessica Hindsley, also known as burlesque dancer Ophelia P. Coque (and best known in these parts for her peacock act requiring a costume made with 400 feathers), loves the razzmatazz of vaudeville, the public gets an annual taste of it during the Diamond Follies, a once-a-year, one-night-only summer stage…
Few art festivals get to have an inaugural year twice, but in the case of the Denver Arts Festival, Mother Nature made it happen: Originally scheduled to debut last September at Sloan’s Lake Park, the big fest folded before it even started, due to last fall’s flood-inducing rains across the…
Cat trainer Samantha Martin, who travels the nation with her Amazing Acro-Cats trained-cat act, is the first to admit that there’s truth to the cliché about herding cats: “The cats, they’ll mess with you a little bit,” she told Westword before a 2011 performance. “They’ll switch up a trick or…
Boulder’s Frequent Flyers aerial dance school and company is already held in high regard. But every August, director Nancy Smith elevates the program to an international level with the two-week International Aerial Dance Festival, bringing master dancers and choreographers from around the world to join an already distinguished student body…
Burns Park is a hidden jewel in plain sight: Trapped in a traffic-heavy triangle bordered by Colorado Boulevard, Alameda Avenue and Leetsdale Drive, it’s in the middle of the action but rarely used. Still, the tiny park has a storied past that includes four big-name modern-minimalist sculptures, the remaining pieces…
Adam Stone doesn’t want to reveal much about the art installation at the center of Screw Tooth’s Prophetia Vetitum Mundi (or Prophecy of the Forbidden World), other than to say that it’s fairly massive and really absurd, every inch of it is covered with tiny pieces of stuff and it’s…
Going to a play in the summer isn’t that different from hitting a blockbuster film or burying your nose in a fat, classic novel: Big themes — Hurricane Katrina, the silent-film milieu of the early twentieth century and the rise of AIDS — power our current theater picks. Keep reading…
Feline-o-philes of all ages purr with joy whenever the Amazing Acro-Cats slink into town because, you know — cats playing guitars and riding skateboards and stuff. Animal trainer Samantha Martin has parked her cat bus in front of the Bug Theatre for a run of performances inside, continuing Thursdays through…
